Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 11:38:54 -0500
From: Pat Courts
Subject: Re: Trouble Hunters on WHEELS
Ron, as a child growing up in Chicago in a large Irish clan, I used to ride
what the family called an "Irish wheel." 4-wheels, very low to the ground,
you sat on it (almost like a go cart) and there was a lever-like steering
mechanism that you moved up and down to nmake the thing go. This is really
testing my descriptive powers, but I've never seen anythin like it since or
before. The mechanism that mobved it was similar to the 2-person railroad
carts: one person on each side of a lever moving it up and sdown to make
the cart run the rails.
At 11:20 AM 11/27/97 -0500, you wrote:
>In disussing the archaism "trouble hunters," BP accidentally cites another:
>
>> "While riding his wheel he was
>bitten by a dog. ... "
>
>I wonder how may people know that WHEEL once commonly meant 'bicycle'? My
>Iowa great-grandmother (b. 1860) regularly used this slang (?) term, and I
>think also her daughters and her daughters' husbands used it. Farmer&Henley
>list this usage, but give no noun cites. Chapman does not list it, nor does
>Beale/Partridge.
>
Cheers,
Pat Courts